12.04.07
Article on the Local Church, Pt. 2
This short essay is the second of three parts of the issue of doctrines of the Local Church stemming from the writings of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee that deviate from Biblical orthodoxy.
Confusion of the Nature of God as Triune
The doctrinal error that the Local Church is most well known for is its distortion of the historic, biblical doctrine of the Trinity. The Local Church has been very deceptive on this issue. On my campus, members of the Local Church hand out flyers with their statement of faith that seems to affirm the Biblical view of one God expressed in three Persons, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, the more you look into their writings it becomes clear that they intentionally confuse the nature of God. We will look into some direct quotes from Local Church publications and then compare this to the Biblical view of God’s Triune expression.
Witness Lee and the Local Church has often been accused of advocating the hertical doctrine of modalism. By definition, a modalist is one who affirms:
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God is one person who has revealed himself in three forms or modes…According to Modalism, during the incarnation, Jesus was simply God acting in one mode or role, and the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was God acting in a different mode. Thus, God never exists as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit at the same time, he can only manifest himself as one person at any specific time. Modalism thus denies the basic distinctiveness and coexistence of the three persons of the Trinity. [2]
To call Witness Lee and the Local Church adherents’ modalist is not completely accurate since Witness Lee often claimed that the three Persons of the Godhead did exist simultaneously. The deviation from orthodoxy arises when in that Witness Lee often wrote that the three Person’s of the Godhead were not distinct in relation and role to one another. This is in clear opposition to the Biblically derived view of God being one God expressed in three Persons differing in their redemtive historical roles and relation to one another. We will look at a number of quotations that clearly outline the Local Church’s pseudo-modalistic view on God’s Triune nature. Many of such qutations can be found on some of the Local Church’s main publication [3]:
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…the entire Godhead, the Triune God, became flesh. [4]
This is in clear defiance of Biblical truth. The scripture says that Jesus was the Word and that the Word was the one who became flesh (John 1:1-14). During Jesus’ incarnation Jesus He prayed to the Father (Matthew 6:9) and was led by the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:12, Matthew 4:16).
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The Father was expressed among men in the Son, and the Son became the Spirit to come into men. The Father is in the Son, and the Son became the Spirit. [5]
Jesus spoke of Himself as both one with the Father (John 10:30) but expresses his distinction from the Father (John 15:24).
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…the Lord Christ is the Spirit and the Spirit is the Lord Christ…. [6]
As was said before, during Jesus’ incarnation He was led by the Spirit (Isaiah 11:1-2) and said that after His resurrection that He would send the Spirit as a distinct separate Person of the one God (John 14:25-26, John 15:26b, Acts 2:33) and that the Spirit submits to Jesus and Glorifies Jesus through His ministry of indwelling believers (John 16:12-14).
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The Father is not only the Father, but is also the Son. [7]
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…the Lord Jesus who is the Son is also the Eternal Father. [8]
In one sense the Father and Son do share the same Divine nature (John 1:1, John 10:30) but Jesus’ ministry of submitting to the Father by doing His will (John 14:31, John 8:23, 28-29, John 4:31-34) and Jesus’ praying to the Father (Matthew 26:49) indicate the difference in the Peron’s of the Father and Son in both role and relation throughout redemptive history.
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…God the Father is also the Spirit (John 4:24). Hence, all three Persons of the Godhead are the Spirit. [9]
Jesus says that the Father gives the Spirit to the Son, Jesus, to send into the world to indwell believers following the resurrection. Jesus, though, said that the Father sends the Spirit through the work of the Son (John 14:25-26, Acts 2:33). Witness Lee and the Local Church distort passages such as John 4:24 which speaks of the Deity of the Spirit as indicating an non-distinction in the Person’s of the Godhead.
I have provided a series of quotations from Local Church quotations that make clear their confusion of the Biblical doctrine of the Trinity. I have also provided a brief argument against these assertions. Below I will list a series of additional quotations that further clarify their teachings on the Trinity as heretical without further counter-argument as that is not the intention of this article and the counter-argument is remarkably similar:
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In the heavens, where man cannot see Him, God is the Father; when He is expressed among men, He is the Son; and when He comes into men, He is the Spirit. The Father was expressed among men in the Son, and the Son became the Spirit to come into men. The Father is in the Son, and the Son became the Spirit—the three are just one God. [9b]
A passage we read earlier says that we no longer know Christ after the flesh. Now if what we believe in is merely an outward religion then we will need a Holy Land, a Mecca, or a Rome to be our center, for us to go for worship and service. But what we believe in is a Christ inside of us. We know that He is both the God in heaven, as well as the Lord in us. Not only is He the very Creator, He was also the Christ that put on the flesh. And now He is in us as the Holy Spirit. The Christ in the flesh is over! Now the Christ in the Spirit lives forever in us [10]
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Now God has accomplished everything in Christ. He died and was resurrected, and has been transformed into the Holy Spirit; He is now ready to come into you. [11]
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He is all in all. He is God, the Creator, the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and also the proper man. He is the reality of all divine attributes and of all human virtues. The hinge of all the aspects of this all-inclusive Christ is the living Spirit. We have no choice except to tell our fellow Christians that our Savior, Jesus Christ, is the living Spirit. Undoubtedly, He is the Lamb of God and the Redeemer, but these are simply two aspects of this all-inclusive One. Christ, the all-inclusive One, is everything. The Bible even describes Him with the term “all in all” (Col. 3:11). Christ is the reality of every positive thing. He is light, life, righteousness, holiness, redemption, salvation, and everything. In our experience, He is the life-giving Spirit indwelling our human spirit. Because we proclaim this, we are accused of being heretical. Our critics say that we teach heresy in telling people that Christ, the Son, is the Father as well as the Spirit. Today, many Christians do not believe that Christ is not only the Son, but also the Father and the Spirit. [12]
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The Spirit is also the consummation of the processed Triune God (Matt. 28:19b). God’s Trinity was perfect, but it needed to be consummated. The divine Trinity was consummated through His incarnation, death, and resurrection. In resurrection, the divine Trinity was consummated in the Spirit. Thus the Spirit is the consummation of the divine Trinity. In other words, the processed Spirit is the consummated Triune God. A raw fish is not consummated, but a cooked fish is consummated. [13]
I would like to conclude this section by defining the Biblical view of God’s triune nature. Bruce Ware, professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in his book Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance defines God’s triune nature as:
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There is one and only one God, eternally existing and fully expressed in three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each member of the Godhead is fully God, each is eternally God, and each is fully God – not three gods but three Persons of the one Godhead. Each person is equal in essence as each possesses fully the identically same, eternal divine nature, yet each is also an eternal and distinct personal expression of the one undivided divine nature. [14]
Historic Christianity has recognized the Trinity to be one God expressed in three Person’s; all of whom share the same Divine nature but differ in roles and relationship. For a brief but Biblically accurate defense of the historic doctrine of God as Triune in opposition to the Local Church’s pseudo-modalistic teachings, Bruce Ware’s book Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance [15] is commended to you to study and investigate the truth of what the Bible says regarding this issue.
In conclusion of this section, Christians throughout history have taken God’s Triune nature very seriously. We believe God has revealed Himself to us as Triune in the form of one God in three distinct Person’s in the Scriptures. We should take the utmost care to get this our understanding and teaching of God’s nature accurate because God takes His name and nature very seriously. It is understood that this is one of the most complex theological topics one can study. This side of eternity we will never understand how one God can express Himself in three distinct Persons differing in roles and inter-relationships. None the less, we should be eager to confirm God’s revelation despite our lack of understanding to worship and glorify the God revealed to us in the Scriptures.
Easy Believism
The Local Church teaches what has been termed “easy believism”. Essentially, this is a distortion of the Gospel which confuses Acts 2:21 and asserts that to be saved a person can be saved by “calling on the name of the Lord” by literally saying “Lord, Lord, Lord” three times in succession. Read the writings on Witness Lee on this issue:
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We have seen that to reach the unbelievers, no preaching is necessary. If we help them say “O Lord” three times, they will be saved. If they open the window, the air will get in. All they have to do is to open their mouths and say, “O Lord, O Lord.” Even if they have no intention of believing, still they will be caught! Regardless of whether they have the intention or not, as long as they open the window, the air will get in. It is not a matter of teaching; it is a matter of touching the seven Spirits of God. [16]
A member of the Local Church tells the story of a man in China who would ride around the city saying “O Lord Jesus” out loud all day trying to get people to imitate Him and repeat “O Lord Jesus” three times to be saved without ever telling them about Jesus [17]. Witness Lee and the Local Church make such a dangerous mistake with such a poor interpretation of Scripture.
To call on the name of the Lord means to repent of one’s sins and turn to Jesus Christ in faith to have one’s sins forgiven and be bathed in the righteousness on Jesus. Paul says that we call on the name of the Lord by believing in Him as Lord which comes from repentance and confession of the mouth of Jesus as Lord:
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Romans 10:9-10
…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart there is believing unto righteousness, and with the mouth there is the confession unto salvation.
Furthermore, Paul goes on to say that a person cannot call on the name of the Lord unless they hear the message of who Jesus Christ is and what He did which is the Gospel by which we are saved:
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Romans 10:13,14
for, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?
We cannot call on the name of the Lord unless we believe and we cannot believe from simply saying the Lord’s name. We must hear the message of the Gospel and place our hope, faith, trust and belief in the person of Jesus Christ to be saved, not simply says a few words in succession. Jesus even goes so far as to rebuke people who say His name who do not know Him as Lord and Savior:
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Luke 6:46
Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do the things which I say?
Why is the issue of easy believism so important? The Gospel of Jesus Christ is all that we have to save lost sinners. The Apostle Paul says that He counts all things as loss compared to the Surpassing worth of knowing Jesus (Philippians 3:8-11). The Gospel is the only agent we have in witnessing to this lost world. To lay aside the preaching of the Gospel and replace it with simple superficial proclamations is a distortion of everything we have and believe as Christians. Even more, Jesus rebuked the people who did such things. Let us strive to be honest to the Gospel and the revelation of Scripture.
Baptismal Regeneration
Baptismal regeneration is a doctrine that teaches that a person’s must be baptized to be saved. This view states that even if a person were to receive the Gospel gladly but not be baptized that they would be dead in their sins and remain under the wrath of God. This is a doctrine that originated in the Roman Catholic Church in the Council of Trent and was confirmed by Vatican II [18]. The doctrine now is most commonly taught by the Church of Christ. Protestant’s have historically defied this doctrine as a distortion of the Gospel and therefore, heretical.
Witness Lee was quoted as affirming that baptism is essential for salvation:
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Formerly, when we were leading people to salvation, we first considered them as seeking friends. After hearing the gospel and believing and receiving the Lord, they had to successfully pass through an interview concerning baptism. It was only after they had passed the interview that they could be baptized and saved. Now we have changed. As long as a person believes, he can be baptized immediately, and he is regenerated and saved. Furthermore, the Bible says, ‘He who believes and is baptized shall be saved’ (Mark 16:16). It does not say that one is baptized after he is saved. Baptism is not carried out after a person is saved; baptism is part of the process of being saved. It is not that one believes and is saved and therefore should be baptized. Rather, it is that one believes and is baptized and therefore is saved. We must be clear concerning this matter.[19]
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Baptism is a testimony before men. All believers should be baptized in order to be saved not only before God, but also before men. The Lord Jesus said: ‘He who believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he who does not believe shall be condemned.’ Mark 16:16. Through baptism, God transfers us from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God. For this reason, the Lord Jesus said: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.’ (John 3:5). [20]
Baptism is an ordinance that signifies our death to our sinful selves before coming to faith and our resurrection to a new creation in Christ just as Christ died and rose (Colossians 2:12). It is interesting that Witness Lee mentions Mark 16:16 in his argument that a person must be baptized to be saved. A more careful reading of the text says that a person is only condemned (not saved) if he does not believe. This leads us to say that a person is saved then by believing and that baptism is a sign of salvation from belief and not a component of salvation.
When the Apostle Paul defines the Gospel in 1 Corinthians 15:1-1-5 and Romans 3:22-26 he mentions the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus Christ but never mentions the need for baptism to be saved. The Bible says many times that to be saved a person must believe in the Gospel to be saved but does not mention that baptism is essential to be saved (Cor 1:21; Jn 3:16,18,36,5:24; Acts 10:43,13:38-39,16:3; Rom 1:16,3:28; 4:24, 5:1; I Cor 15:1-4; Eph 2:8,9). In fact, Paul makes the distinction to say that his ministry was to preach the Gospel and not to baptize (1 Corinthians 1:17) and that he was glad that he did not baptize many people in Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:14-16). Evidently, he did not see baptism as essential for the salvation of the Corinthians.
In one instance the Bible says that those who are believe and are baptized are saved (Mark16:16). When this verse is laid alongside the pile of verses that speak of believing in the Gospel alone to receive salvation without any mention of baptism, it leads us to believe that of course those who believe and baptized are saved. If you believe you are saved which leads a person to be baptized as a proclamation of their faith.
It is essential to get the Gospel right because it is the means by which we are saved and we can save others. There are many great resources on the Biblical Gospel [21]. For a more elaborate defense of salvation by faith alone against the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, see C.H. Spurgeon’s thesis on this topic [22]. We should strive to ensure that the Gospel we teach and live by is in accordance with the truth of Scripture and avoid the heretical teachings that add to this Gospel because the Apostle Paul says that such people are cursed by God (Galatians 1:9)
End Notes:
[1] http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/loca.html
[2] http://www.theopedia.com/Modalism
[3]http://www.triunegod.org/quotes/index.html;http://www.contendingforthefaith.org/summary/booklets/revelation.html; and http://www.contendingforthefaith.org/summary/booklets/triune.html.
[4] Witness Lee. God’s New Testament Economy, fifth printing, 2002 (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1986), p. 230 (emphasis added).
[5] Ibid., p. 9 (emphasis added).
[6] The New Testament Recovery Version, note 1811, third printing, 2001 (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1991), p. 775.
[7] Witness Lee. The Economy of God, seventh printing, 1997 (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1968), p. 47.
[8] Witness Lee. Concerning the Triune God, third edition, 1994 (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1973), p. 19.
[9] Ibid., p. 14.
[10] Nee, Watchman. “The Normal Christian Faith,” (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Church Book Room, 1977), 213.
[11] Nee, Watchman. “The Normal Christian Faith,” (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Church Book Room, 1977), 224.
[12] Lee, Witness. Organism of the Triune God in the Organic Union of His Divine Trinity, (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1988), p. 40.
[13] Lee, Witness. Organism of the Triune God in the Organic Union of His Divine Trinity, (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1988), p. 24.
[14] Ware, Bruce. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance (Crossway Publishing, 2005), p. 43.
[15] Ware, Bruce. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance (Crossway Publishing, 2005).
[16] Witness Lee, Stream Magazine, Vlll: l, Feb l, 1970, 6.
[17] http://www.bcbsr.com/topics/lc.html
[18] http://cnview.com/on_line_resources/baptismal_regeneration.htm
[19] Lee, Witness, “The Up-to-Date Presentation of the Go-Ordained Way and the Signs Concerning the Coming of Christ ,” (Living Stream Ministry, 1991), 11 as quoted by Jim Moran in http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~dazuma/lcinfo/lotm/sal.html.
[20] The Local Church, “The Mystery of Human Life,” (Living Stream Ministry, 1986), p. 16. See an online version of it in http://www.geocities.com/churchintug/mhl.html.
[21] Sproul, R.C. Getting the Gospel Right. (Bayer Books, 2003).
[22] Spurgeon, C.H. Spurgeon’s most famous sermon refuting the theory of baptismal regeneration (Pilgrim Publications, 1975).